David “Razor” Babb tried to escape from California’s Los Angeles County Jail in 1998. A 60-foot fall during the attempt left Babb a paraplegic and eventually yearning for a way to spend his time and earn a living while inside. This is how Babb found writing and began publishing a newspaper from his cell that was soon distributed around the yard. In the decades since, he’s written several novels and launched prison newspapers, The Corcoran Sun, The Mule Creek Post, and Vanguard Incarcerated Press, some of which now have national circulation.
Babb draws upon Hindu teachings to inform his rather free-form writing practice.
“I get inspired and just go with it,” Babb said in an interview conducted with Prism over email. “Using Yogananda’s belief in the interconnectedness of all souls and infinite awareness. I tap into infinite creativity.”
Babb now has decades of publishing under his belt from the release of his novels, the publication of his newspapers, and his reporting for outlets like the Prison Journalism Project, but some of his earliest experience came through PEN America’s long-running and highly prestigious Prison Writing Awards. Babb’s escape attempt was the subject of his 2007 personal essay that he submitted to PEN’s Prison Writing Contest. Babb took third place.
“That was really inspiring,” Babb said. “The following year I wrote about my time with OJ [Simpson] in L.A. County. That won first prize. I was doing books, The Corcoran Sun was popular all over, I was getting mail from everywhere, earning a living, even romance was blooming from the writing. It was crazy.”
The exposure Babb received through his affiliation with PEN led to invaluable successes. But there was also disappointment. He said he often received poor communication from the organization regarding his submissions and there was a lack of accountability in PEN’s prison writing mentorship program, not to mention long-delayed payment for prize money that accompanied his wins. Babb’s experiences with PEN mirror the experiences of other incarcerated writers involved in the organization’s prison writing programs. All of these writers say they appreciate the ways that PEN has supported their craft, but that they have also been harmed by the organization’s mismanagement.
PEN prison programming
Founded in the aftermath of the 1971 Attica uprising, PEN’s annual Prison Writing Contest has grown to become one of the longest-running and among the most highly acclaimed writing contests for incarcerated writers. Every year, hundreds of incarcerated writers send in submissions in five categories: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and memoir. First, second, and third place winners are selected in each category by PEN’s Prison Writing Committee and awarded prizes of $250, $150, and $100, respectively.
On its website, PEN acknowledges that the Prison Writing Contest has, for many years, been the driving force behind its larger suite of prison programming, including its advocacy work, mentorship program, and the release of various publications. Also launched in the 1970s, PEN’s Prison and Justice Mentorship Program is a direct offshoot of the Prison Writing Contest and pairs incarcerated writers with volunteer mentors on the outside who have professional writing careers. Mentors offer feedback to incarcerated mentees on both new and existing work. In publicly available materials, PEN states that the program aims to uplift different perspectives and help familiarize incarcerated writers with the publishing world and the overall literary landscape. PEN’s annual writing contest serves as a pipeline into the mentorship program, with mentees often being recommended by the contests’ judging committee.
In 2022, PEN announced the launch of its Incarcerated Writers Bureau, a similar program that paired writers on the outside with those on the inside but with a narrower focus on more seasoned writers. Rather than a mentor-mentee relationship, Bureau participants on the outside are “coaches” and work with individual incarcerated writers to both ideate and edit longer-form projects and pitch them to major outlets. A major component of the Bureau was supposed to be an online hub that sought to present incarcerated writers to the literary and journalism community and serve as a contact for editors and outlets seeking to publish their work. The hub never launched and information on the Bureau can no longer be found online.
PEN prison programming has also included the publication of anthologies featuring the writings of contest winners and the 2022 book The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life In Prison. In 2023, PEN’s Banned Books Week campaign took a specific focus on prison book bans and included the release of the report “Reading Between the Bars: An In-Depth Look at Prison Censorship.”
PEN’s investment in such robust prison programming has earned them coverage in outlets ranging from O Magazine and Axios to Harper’s Bazaar and The New York Times. That public recognition has only been bolstered by financial support. In 2021, the Mellon Foundation awarded PEN a three-year $1.5 million grant to expand the organization’s Prison and Justice Writing Program. The Tow Foundation also granted PEN $300,000 for the Incarcerated Writers Bureau.
Small fortunes, delayed
Incarcerated winners of PEN’s annual Prison Writing Contest say they received their prize money late—often only after advocates on the outside followed up with PEN, or that they did not receive prize money at all. In a recent op-ed published by Prism, incarcerated writer Alex Tretbar shared his story of winning a first-place prize in PEN’s 2022 Prison Writing Contest. After many exchanges with PEN, he received the money almost two years later when he was no longer incarcerated. Upon learning about Tretbar’s experience, writer, editor, and op-ed co-writer Natalye Childress tracked down PEN award winners from 2020-2023. While most of the writers Childress contacted were paid, five said they had not received their awards, totaling $925 in missing payments.
We are incredibly powerless in here. Every inmate, if he or she is lucky, relies on an outside support group to get anything accomplished. The last thing we want to do is burn bridges, and I feel like PEN might have been aware of our reticence.
Val Johnson
“I feel like if I were running an organization that was giving prizes to people, there would be very strict standards in place to track who was given the money, when it was received, and getting some kind of feedback from the winners,” Childress told Prism, “That’s just not happening. That kind of accountability is not there. It’s like, ‘Here’s the money, we’re sending it into the ether.’”
Val Johnson, a currently incarcerated writer who won multiple PEN awards and is using a pseudonym to protect his identity, spoke to Prism about his experience.
“I didn’t want to annoy PEN and so I let many months pass before inquiring about payment,” Johnson said. “I finally did, but in the most polite way possible, not wanting to jeopardize my future relationship with the organization. We are incredibly powerless in here. Every inmate, if he or she is lucky, relies on an outside support group to get anything accomplished. The last thing we want to do is burn bridges, and I feel like PEN might have been aware of our reticence.”
Babb, who repeatedly inquired about his submission to PEN’s 2023 Prison Writing Awards, was left in the dark about his win.
“I actually wasn’t even notified that I’d won. Another contestant told me,” Babb said. “When I inquired about the prize, I was misinformed that I hadn’t won although I had acquired a list of the winners, made a copy, sent another letter, and finally got paid about a year later.”
Operating any system that requires paying incarcerated freelancers is complex and comes with its own set of challenges. Many facilities do not allow incarcerated people to receive funds via checks or cash. Money can be placed on a person’s books or otherwise delivered via a “proxy,” often a close friend or family member, who manages funds or serves as a power of attorney.
PEN’s lack of infrastructure that would keep award winners from slipping through the cracks is particularly alarming in the case of the Prison Writing Awards given how low prison wages are. For incarcerated recipients, awards in the hundreds of dollars can amount to what Tretbar and Childress described in their op-ed as a “small fortune.”
“Even in states where incarcerated people are compensated for their work, $25 can be more than a month’s worth of pay,” wrote Tretbar and Childress. “Enough money to afford luxuries such as coffee or a new pair of shoes.”
Johnson shared that he intended to use his award money to further his craft by purchasing books and writing supplies.
“Good writers borrow, great writers steal as the saying goes, and I have tried to shamelessly shift my stylistic felicities from the authors I most admire,” Johnson said. “The prize money is relatively insignificant on the outside, but as you know, several hundreds of dollars in here is more than I’m paid in the year through my present job.”
Babb shared that he gives any and all prize money he receives to his sister, whom he describes as “the one who looks out for me when I really need it.”
In an April 17 statement released from PEN in response to Tretbar and Childress’ op-ed, the organization said they made contact with the unpaid writers mentioned in the op-ed, reconciled their payments, and included an additional monetary award for each winner.
“The Prison and Justice Writing team reached out directly to six writers who came to our attention as not having received checks in the 2020 to 2022 period, and in all but one case, reconciled payment of the contest prize money to them (we are still waiting to hear back from one),” the statement reads. “To acknowledge the impact of the delayed payment, we were also able to offer the writers an additional monetary award, beyond the cash prize.”
As of publication, some of the writers in touch with Childress say they still have not received their PEN prize winnings. In a May 1 statement to Prism, a spokesperson for PEN said the organization is “committed to making sure every incarcerated contest winner receives the cash awards they deserve in a timely manner.” According to the organization, the Prison and Justice Writing team reached out directly to six writers who did not receive checks between 2020 to 2022 and “as of last week, the payments of all six writers have been sent out. Three of the six have confirmed they received the payment, and we are tracking the other three payments that have been issued and are in transit,” the spokesperson told Prism, noting there were a total of 94 payments issued from 2020 to 2022.
“During these years, the COVID pandemic required all staff to work from home and interrupted our established process for issuing and receiving physical mail, our primary form of communicating with writers inside,” the spokesperson said.
PEN said in its statement on April 17 that the Prison and Justice Writing Program has “created an internal audit system to double check to ensure all payments that go out each month are received by the loved ones of the incarcerated writers (since many prisons do not allow incarcerated individuals to be paid directly) or the writers themselves.” However, according to an April 15 email exchange between a PEN employee and one writer who chased funds owed to him since before he was released from prison three years ago, it’s unclear if PEN’s finance team “can verify a check was cashed from two to three years ago,” the staffer wrote.
“The [Prison and Justice Writing Program] will continue to track payments through an internal audit system for [Prison and Justice Writing] team members and ensure all payments that go out each month are received by the loved ones of the incarcerated writers since many prisons do not allow incarcerated individuals to be paid directly, or the writers themselves,” a PEN spokesperson told Prism May 1.
‘That’s where everything was breaking down’
A major element of PEN’s prison programming is the cultivation of relationships between writers on the outside and inside. Incarcerated freelancers seeking to get their work out into the public face barriers beyond the potential stigma that may cast a shade over how their work is received. The same communication barriers that pose challenges for payments also limit their ability to communicate with editors and can stymie the process that moves a draft to a final published piece. The prison walls can also keep editors and publishers from knowing the full depth of talent amongst incarcerated writers, even as these outlets seek to expand their own coverage of the prison system.
PEN’s two mentorship-based offerings—the Prison and Justice Writing Program and Incarcerated Writers Bureau—seek to fill those gaps by providing incarcerated writers with a dedicated mentor or coach to offer feedback on their work and also serve as a liaison of sorts, plugging these incarcerated writers into the larger literary world on the outside. Despite the possibilities of these programs, structural issues have not only barred it from being effective but, in some cases, have demoralized incarcerated writers and reinforced their marginalization.
In PEN’s long-running Prison and Justice Writing Program, the organization acts as an intermediary for all correspondence between mentor and mentee. Instead of placing the two in direct contact, PEN receives handwritten letters from mentees and forwards them along to mentors; letters from mentors are scanned by PEN and sent to mentees inside. Mentees are not initially given the full name of their mentors, a policy that was likely designed for security reasons, but that reinforces some of the already imbalanced power dynamics, according to Childress.
“That’s where everything was breaking down,” Childress said. “They send it to PEN and then PEN wouldn’t forward it, or vice versa, is what we’re assuming happened. I understand as someone who is not incarcerated, especially a writer who is a woman, you want to be careful about what information you give to someone who is in prison. But at the same time, to withhold your identity or to make people go through these channels, because you [think] the [incarcerated writer] will be inappropriate or whatever, it’s like, maybe the mentor will also be inappropriate—that’s not unheard of. I feel like it’s putting these kinds of labels or stereotypes on [mentees] as if we expect you to be this kind of person.”
The lack of direct contact has also meant that if PEN fails to keep track of correspondence between mentors and mentees, the entire relationship disintegrates, leaving many mentees unsure of whether PEN lost their letters or if their mentors simply ghosted them.
“I received a mentor intro letter, responded, and didn’t hear back,” Babb said. “Then a year later, the mentor wrote to ask why I hadn’t responded to their first letter. She had even sent a copy of her work and spoke of collaboration. I was really excited, wrote an exhaustive response, which I guess she never received. I think having mentors contact via tablet is best. The current process doesn’t work.”
The problem with PEN as intermediaries is that their organizational skills are sorely lacking. I don’t think it’s outright malice, but just taking for granted they can perhaps not try quite so hard when dealing with inmates. The idea that we’re lucky to get any of their time at all.
Anonymous writer
Incarcerated writers who spoke to Prism for this reporting also shared that, throughout the course of their mentorship cycle, they weren’t in sustained contact with PEN. Outside of an introduction letter to the program, writers inside didn’t have a PEN point person to connect with if they experienced issues with the program or their mentor.
“My mentor was a fine person but I stopped hearing from him after sending him a draft of my latest writing; I don’t think the fault lies with him at all,” one writer told Prism anonymously. “He was engaged and even ordered multiple books for me on his own. The problem with PEN as intermediaries is that their organizational skills are sorely lacking. I don’t think it’s outright malice, but just taking for granted they can perhaps not try quite so hard when dealing with inmates. The idea that we’re lucky to get any of their time at all.”
According to a new PEN staffer, it was only last year that the organization hired an employee to restructure and lead the mentorship program.
In a statement to Prism, PEN described that restructuring process as helping “numerous program participants establish or resume correspondence through prison email channels” and that training materials were expanded to include “a more robust toolkit and virtual educational sessions for mentors.”
In response to inquiries about the Incarcerated Writers Bureau, PEN’s newest program crafted for more seasoned incarcerated writers, PEN shared that the website rollout was delayed due to “staff transitions” and will be launched later this year. In the interim, PEN wrote, “writers and coaches have been contacted about all program updates.”
The risks of writing inside
While the line between malice and unintentional mismanagement is not necessarily thin, it matters less when weighed against the consequences shouldered by incarcerated writers. PEN’s programming for incarcerated writers has existed for decades. That the organization has not developed better practices that smaller, less resourced groups have put into place is worrisome to Emily Nonko, co-founder of Empowerment Avenue.
Launched in 2020, Empowerment Avenue is a nonprofit collective that builds inside-outside relationships to support writers, journalists, poets, and visual artists. The collective aims to bridge the gap between mainstream venues and incarcerated creatives. Nonko founded the organization with Rahsaan Thomas, a writer who was previously incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. As the director of Empowerment Avenue’s Writing for Liberation track, Nonko oversees a volunteer cohort of up to 60 writers who support incarcerated writers on the inside, helping them develop their craft and guiding them through the pitching and publication process.
“This work is unbelievably challenging,” said Nonko in an interview with Prism. “I just cannot stress that enough. The prison system makes this so hard and you’re working with a population that’s taking massive amounts of risk to do this work. What I see in this space is there’s not a really deep understanding of what people actually really need to be supported while incarcerated.”
For incarcerated writers whose work focuses on their experiences inside, the risk of punishment and retaliation they experience is immense. The dangers of the work require organizations who help writers craft these stories and also provide sustained support once stories are published.
Babb recounted numerous instances in which his reporting resulted in retaliation from prison officials, especially when he published a piece in The Corcoran Sun that got picked up by TMZ. Babb said prison officials showed up to his cell “eight deep in riot gear.”
“Recently I did a canteen price gouging story that was posted on Yahoo News,” Babb said. “They freaked out on this one and called me in. It was a whole ‘thing.’ There’s also some weird dynamic about an inmate doing anything that’s seen as successful, like we’re not supposed to be doing things that are sort of fun or good.”
In addition to potential retaliation, the complexity of communication systems and payment processes requires a deeper intentionality. In some cases, especially for smaller organizations like Empowerment Avenue, that also means acknowledging organizational capacity.
“There are so many writers who are incarcerated that systems can easily become overwhelmed,” Nonko said. “So for us—it was always a really hard decision to make—but we don’t have an open application process. We just are a very small team, we’re not fully funded, we can’t handle the amount of inquiries, and we had to be more intentional about how we’re recruiting writers into the space. I’m not defending that as a best practice, but I’m just saying, we only wanted to support the number of writers that we could really be accountable to, and it takes a lot of work to do that.”
Nonko says that organizations looking to foster inside-outside relationships must prioritize figuring out what their volunteer or mentor selection process looks like and how they can reliably ensure participant compensation.
“People on the outside lead very busy lives and prison communication is hard. You need someone to be paying a lot of attention to these inside-outside relationships, and also be willing to find other volunteers when the original volunteers that you hope have worked out don’t,” Nonko said.
“A couple of them are in almost despair, like, ‘I’m never gonna submit anything again to them, because they broke their promise and this is, sadly, what we’re used to. This is how we’re treated by people.’”
Natalye Childress
To ensure incarcerated writers get paid on time, Empowerment Avenue employs a very “intensive onboarding process” that allows writers to outline whether they prefer to be communicated with via digital prison messaging services or snail mail. Inside writers also make clear whether they prefer to have payments sent directly to them or to a power of attorney, proxy, or partner.
Due to the small network of organizations that run inside-outside mentorship programs, Nonko’s work with Empowerment Avenue has often intersected with PEN because they have, at times, supported the same writers. Nonko shared multiple instances when Empowerment Avenue had to step in and support incarcerated writers as they navigated pitches or received payments from outlets after they stopped hearing from PEN mentors.
“It’s frustrating when you’re like a small, tiny, collective-based organization that’s chasing after this stuff and it’s not because your organization did it,” Nonko said. “So that speaks to the mentorship challenges and just how much support people need. You cannot connect people and say, ‘Good luck!’ That’s not how this works. I think a lot of these organizations wish this was how it worked because that’s what they’re doing.”
The failure to implement infrastructure to streamline communication with incarcerated writers creates a chilling effect, especially for newer writers who have yet to launch their careers. When surveying past PEN winners, Childress was particularly disheartened to read letters from incarcerated writers who felt discouraged.
“Those were the heartbreaking ones where people were just like, devastated because they were hoping for this kind of connection and those were kind of sad to read,” said Childress. “A couple of them are in almost despair, like, ‘I’m never gonna submit anything again to them, because they broke their promise and this is, sadly, what we’re used to. This is how we’re treated by people.’”
Prison programming designed to last
In a coach orientation for PEN’s Incarcerated Writers Bureau, the former deputy director of PEN’s Prison and Justice Writing Program mentioned PEN’s hopes that the Bureau “lasts forever.”
It was a quick unscripted mention likely aimed to engender confidence that the program will remain invested in its writers and coaches. However, the idea that a resource supporting incarcerated writers might last into perpetuity also raises questions about the propensity for the program to ever be an abolitionist project. The vagueness of their flagship writing program—“Prison and Justice”—also leaves a lot unanswered when it comes to PEN’s stance on the future of the prison system. Does the overall work seek justice for the imprisoned? Or, in PEN’s view, can justice exist within prison?
In a comment responding to inquiry about PEN’s stance on abolition, the organization said the “central goal” of the Prison Writing Program “has always been to uplift writers experiencing incarceration and to attend to their individual writing goals.”
In a statement to Prism, PEN wrote that they “leverage the transformative possibilities of writing to raise public consciousness about the societal implications of mass incarceration and support the development of justice-involved literary talent.”
“[PEN] will go hard telling you, ‘We are not abolitionists, don’t call us that, don’t put that name anywhere near us,’” Nonko said. “And so for me, you have a prison writing program, you’re saying you’re supporting incarcerated writers and you have no investment in ending these systems that these people are suffering under? To me, that’s very indicative of what’s happening right now with their stance on Palestine.”
PEN was recently forced to cancel flagship events, including its literary awards ceremony and World Voices Festival, after a number of authors withdrew their names from PEN writing prizes due to the organization’s failure to condemn the genocide in Gaza by the Israeli state. An open letter signed by writers noted that Palestinian writers have been risking their lives to share their work with the world and yet “PEN America appears unwilling to stand with them firmly against the powers that have oppressed and dispossessed them for the last 75 years.”
While PEN is not an abolitionist organization, it has supported programs, books, and exhibits by abolitionist organizers and authors. PEN has also engaged in ongoing advocacy work around ending prison censorship.
What does it mean, though, when an organization without an explicitly abolitionist politic runs a robust suite of prison programming? Does it lose its value or come with limitations? These questions must be considered by PEN and other outlets and organizations working with incarcerated writers. The importance is only heightened as prison writing grows increasingly popular and attractive to foundations—many of which have been pushed into the space only after nationwide uprisings in 2020 calling for abolition and divestment from the carceral state.
The cost of burning bridges
For incarcerated writers who have been involved with PEN, the lack of other substantial prison writing opportunities paired with PEN’s prestige place them in a tough position. Their disappointment with mismanagement is entangled with the benefits of working with PEN. Some writers said that even PEN’s outdated systems can provide unexpected benefits.
William Fletcher, past Prison Writing Award winner who is still currently incarcerated, is using a pseudonym. Fletcher said he experienced late payments from PEN, and inconsistency from his mentor. Despite the challenges, he noted that PEN remains one of the few outlets who still accept handwritten letters.
“There is currently no word processing available at this facility,” the writer said. “PEN continues to accept handwritten work but for other more mainstream outlets, I have to send written work outside to [friends who] help type it up, which can take three to four back-and-forths to get presentable.”
Writers like Babb are similarly willing to offer PEN grace, sharing that “their value far outshines their imperfections.”
“It’s a big deal to miss out on mentors who want to help,” Babb said, “but I wouldn’t be too hard on PEN, I’d rather spend that energy trying to help them, maybe more volunteers.”
So much of the grace given to PEN also stems from an understanding of the way their programs, despite their faults, have helped the careers of writers inside as well as their potential future impact given the staggering amount of resources at their disposal. Johnson would like to see PEN dedicate more of the resources made available to them via grant funding towards doing more targeted outreach to incarcerated writers.
“Connect inmate writers with people on the outside who can help them post-release and make a life for themselves,” said Johnson. “More reentry services are always needed, and the imprimatur of PEN could go a long way in helping that difficult transition.”
An award or nod from PEN can open up new possibilities for incarcerated writers, including publishing deals, writing jobs, and access to a larger audience. Thus, despite not being managed with the care and intention that they deserve, incarcerated writers have little incentive to speak up against the organization because of the space it occupies within the literary world.
“Their name is powerful and confers a legitimacy on incarcerated writers that we would otherwise be hard-pressed to achieve,” said Johnson. “I think what’s more disappointing is the wasted opportunity of their efforts. Inmates, of all people, know that people make mistakes. This is certainly a forgivable one on their part, and one I sincerely hope they learn from. But first, they have to acknowledge it happened.”
Disclosure: As part of PEN America’s Incarcerated Writers Bureau, Prism Features Editor Tina Vasquez was a coach paired with incarcerated writer Derek Trumbo, now a Prism columnist.
